Thank you so much, Madam Chair. I'll try to match Mr. Maloney's brevity.
This is genuinely surprising, because Mr. Viersen, I believe, was elected at the same time as me, in 2015, and throughout his whole career he has been a passionate advocate for protecting vulnerable people. I commend him for that, but when the rubber meets the road in terms of legislation, he is nowhere to be found, and members of his party are covering up for him.
It started with Bill S-210, which was a bill the Conservatives were in favour of. It was a digital ID bill that I didn't agree with, but I admired the intent to protect vulnerable people. Mr. Viersen, even though it was a Conservative bill, came to the committee I was on and filibustered it. Despite nine years of saying he wanted to stand up, he wouldn't let that bill be studied. He wouldn't let it have its day.
So, unlike Mr. Maloney, I have seen this before—Conservatives pretending to care about vulnerable people. I think most of them do. I imagine this is something from the leader's office saying, “Please, dear God, don't let Arnold come and testify to this bill.” What are they afraid of?
Mr. Kurek spoke for almost two and a half hours and didn't mention Mr. Viersen once; he did not mention his trust in his colleague. If they don't have trust in him, if they don't believe him and if they don't think he supports this legislation, maybe he should pass it on to someone else in the caucus, or, alternatively, let's get this studied. Why don't we bring him here this afternoon? Let's have a study; let's discuss it with him and do this important study.
The other surprising thing is that Mr. Kurek spent a great deal of his time talking about things that aren't even in this bill. It's amazing. It's not a long bill, so Mr. Kurek may be reading things that don't exist, or maybe he read the online harms bill, because a lot of the victim impact statements that he talked about—which are compelling and important, and we need to discuss these things—were about taking content down off the Internet. This bill does not accomplish that.
My hope is that it's not an issue of cowardice. I don't think that's Mr. Viersen's style. I think it's an issue of his colleagues not trusting him, not allowing him to speak and silencing him. It's funny: In question period, they always accuse the Prime Minister of silencing his MPs and his cabinet ministers. Why aren't any of the members here standing up for Arnold? Mr. Brock is one of the ones who get up and ask, “Why is the Prime Minister silencing members of the Liberal caucus?” while, hypocritically, he sits here and just looks on blankly. “Don't let Arnold come and testify, because I don't trust him.” That's what Mr. Brock is saying. He does not trust his colleague.